1. ★...a dazzling celebration of the imagination. George’s haiku-like poems and Stringer’s colorful origami animals combine to tell the story of a child who needs only squares of paper to create a world of play...Stringer’s illustrations...burst with colors and patterns.               
   

                                         --Publisher’s Weekly (starred)

1. ★Accurately rendered origami animals made from an array of brilliantly patterned papers parade across a young folder’s table... an engrossing collaboration.                               
   

                                         --Kirkus Reviews (starred)

1. • ...The vividly colored acrylics depict the boy actively engaged in play with his creations, and the details that Stringer provides infuse the verses with both energy and humor.   
   

                                         --School Library Journal

1. •...Warm in colors and often large in scale, Stringer’s acrylic paintings capture the world of the boy’s imaginative play as well as the intricately folded paper figures that inspire and inhabit it. Unusual, handsome, and good for reading aloud.
   

                                          --Booklist

A Little Bit About...

How I Came to Illustrate Fold Me A Poem:

Kristine O’Connell George’s poems on origami immediately took me back to my childhood where everything I touched came to life in my imagination.

I remember sitting at my grandma’s breakfast table and making the spoon from the sugar bowl have conversations with the salt shaker and my toast became a raft to “sugar island.” When I began working on this book, I had never made origami before so it took me several months of practice to be able to fold the animals for the poems, but it did not take me long to paint them into life. My studio came alive with paper animals and paint; the perfect way to make it through a Minnesota winter.

On the wall behind my drawing table are origami papers, sketches, photos of my son folding origami, and photos of my own hands folding origami. Every time I practiced folding I fell in love with the shapes my hands made while folding. Sometimes they even looked like the animals I was trying to fold!

A day in my studio while working on Fold Me A Poem...

Teachers Guide Fold Me a Poem

(260 kb Adobe Acrobat PDF)